Arizona players have begun to enter the transfer portal with head coach Jedd Fisch heading to Washington. Here are five players Alabama should consider adding.
Much like Alabama, the Arizona football program has seen its share of attrition recently with head coach Jedd Fisch departing the program to accept the head coaching position at Washington.
With that said, the roster turnover will continue to take place. The same will continue to happen in Tuscaloosa.
Arizona had a tremendous season this past year in the PAC-12. Fisch helped propel the Wildcats program to new heights. There were players on both sides of the ball who would be valued if and when they entered the transfer portal.
Roll Tide Wire takes a look at five Arizona players that Alabama should take a look at.
Pete Carroll’s son was a prominent name in the Arizona head coaching search, but another candidate got the job instead.
It was never likely that Pete Carroll would actually be hired by the Arizona Wildcats for their football head coach position. However, Carroll’s son, Brennan, is still the offensive coordinator in Tucson. He was being considered for the vacancy left by Jedd Fisch, who left for the University of Washington.
Brent Brennan, the head coach at San Jose State, was always a likely candidate for the Arizona job alongside Brennan Carroll. Who else might have Arizona considered? That was an open question. In the meantime, though, the Wildcats moved quickly and got a big-time hire.
We will soon see if Brennan is someone who can prevent Jedd Fisch from taking U of A players with him to Seattle. Brennan will try to retain players from the roster and give the Wildcats a chance to compete with Utah for the 2024 Big 12 title.
See what people are saying about this unexpected job opening in the coaching carousel, right before Brent Brennan got hired by Arizona:
What are your predictions for Colorado’s home finale against Arizona?
Head coach Deion Sanders and the Colorado Buffaloes football team have essentially reached must-win mode if they have hopes of earning a bowl bid in Coach Prime’s first season in Boulder.
It won’t be easy for the Buffs, but first up is their home finale against No. 23 Arizona on Saturday afternoon at Folsom Field.
After being losers of five out of its last six games, Colorado is due a win, and with it being the final home game of the season, I’m sure the Buffs will bring their best effort.
As kickoff approaches, here are five bold predictions for Colorado’s final Pac-12 home game:
We’re not going to pretend everything is fine at USC. It’s not. @IanHest produced our latest podcast episode.
The USC Trojans were not ready to play against Arizona. Bryson Shaw defended Alex Grinch after the Colorado game, saying the players were letting Grinch down. That should have translated into a focused, alert performance from the opening kickoff to the final gun, but that did not happen. USC was asleep in the first quarter and needed to rally from 17 points down to win in triple overtime.
USC is 6-0, but this season is not going the way Trojan fans hoped. This team has to play a lot better to make the Pac-12 Championship Game and stay in contention for the College Football Playoff. We talked about this on our latest Trojans Wired podcast, produced and co-hosted by Ian Hest.
Listen to the show below after our College Wire links of the week:
We joined @MarkRogersTV and @Tim_Prangley to review Arizona and look ahead to South Bend this Saturday.
There is no shortage of topics to explore after USC’s complicated and concerning triple-overtime win over Arizona. The Trojans are 6-0 but are in a genuine state of crisis heading into South Bend to face Notre Dame on Saturday.
We talked about the Arizona game and previewed the Notre Dame game — and addressed the Alex Grinch situation — on our weekly show with Mark Rogers and Tim Prangley at The Voice of College Football.
We joined @Tim_Prangley to take your calls after the win over Arizona.
The USC-Arizona game was so close, so poorly coached, and so concerning for USC football fans that we had to take your phone calls on Sunday. At The Voice of College Football, Trojans Wire and Tim Prangley took phone calls from Trojan fans after the 43-41 triple-overtime win over Arizona. We went through the various plot points and reasons for alarmism, trying to make sense of a Trojan team which isn’t putting all the pieces together and is not improving each week.
The defense under Alex Grinch had its moments, but once again, it didn’t play a complete game. It played about 20 really good minutes. Against better teams, that won’t get the job done.
Lincoln Riley isn’t putting the offensive line in a position to succeed, either. We talked about that as well.
Need to vent? Need to relieve some stress? This call-in show is for you. You might feel better after watching it.
Five-star Elijah Rushing de-commits from Arizona over the weekend.
Arizona lost the biggest piece of its current recruiting class with the de-commitment of Elijah Rushing over the weekend.
Rushing is one of the nation’s top-ranked recruits. The 6-foot-6, 225-pound edge rusher was the highest-ranked commitment in the 2024 recruiting class for Arizona.
Citing what he sees as “progress and strides” in the rebuilding Arizona program, Rushing said that despite this growth he doesn’t see the Wildcats as what is best for his future.
Rushing said as much in a statement made on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter:
“I have come to the conclusion that the program is not the right fit for me to take the next step with regard to my development. I am therefore decommitting from the program.”
Arizona should have gone for two. The Wildcats also shouldn’t have thrown long when they were mashing USC’s front. They blew it.
That was one horribly-coached football game on Saturday night in the Los Angeles Coliseum.
Lincoln Riley and Alex Grinch turned in a very poor performance. USC was soft and disorganized and fundamentally unprepared. Arizona had a different problem. The Wildcats were ready to play, and they took the fight to USC for most of the night, but they came undone with untimely penalties and some very bad situational decisions from coach Jedd Fisch.
Game management was a very big problem for a number of coaches on Saturday in college football. Mario Cristobal of Miami did not take a knee, and his Hurricanes fumbled away a win over Georgia Tech. Riley and Fisch both flailed and floundered in the USC-Arizona game, but ultimately, Arizona’s situational coaching was a little bit worse.
Let’s go through the many missteps of the two coaches, with Arizona giving USC that last push over the finish line on a night which was hugely entertaining for neutral fans but extremely annoying for USC and Arizona fans:
USC’s defense did make a few important plays, but the larger reality is that this unit is simply not ready for prime time.
Yes, USC did beat Arizona on Saturday night. The Trojans won, 43-41. Yet, USC fans aren’t especially happy or confident. They are relieved with one win on one night, but they know this level of performance from the defense simply won’t cut it in the future. The Trojans are nowhere near ready to beat Washington or Oregon. They might not be ready to beat Utah on October 21 if Cam Rising returns to the field for the Utes in that game.
The odds of USC making the Pac-12 Championship Game are not great. If the Trojans can’t get back to Las Vegas, this season will be a total failure. Things have to change — substantially — for this team to realize its potential.
The defense simply can’t go on like this. Let’s give you a taste of how the evening went in the Coliseum against an Arizona offense which often punched the Trojans in the mouth:
This was a horror show which somehow did not end in disaster, but the storm clouds still linger over the Trojans.
USC won. That’s good. Just about everything else about Saturday night’s game against Arizona was bad. Let’s not kid ourselves or run from the truth: This was horrible. This was worse than Arizona State and Colorado. The Trojans are regressing instead of improving. There is less reason for optimism about this season, not more, despite the fact that USC is 6-0.
Offense, defense, special teams — USC was not up to par in any facet of competition. The Trojans very nearly lost to Arizona as a 21-point favorite. They very nearly ruined their entire season before the first highly anticipated game on the slate, the Week 7 battle at Notre Dame on October 14.
Here is just a small sampling of the larger reactions and startling facts which accompanied this very ugly triple-overtime 43-41 win over Arizona:
